Severe damage to planes and hangars at Burlington airport on Bell School Line south of Britannia Rd Burlington fire and Halton Police on scene, airport has been closed due to high winds.
Photo credit: Andrew Collins
Nearly 4,000 hydro customers lost power and the city’s rural airport was hit hard when a windstorm blew through Burlington and much of southern Ontario on Monday.
The storm was at its peak from late afternoon to the early evening with Environment Canada predicting wind gusts up to 90 or 100 km/h.
Burlington Hydro crews scrambled to remove downed trees and branches that brought down power lines. Most of the electrical outages occurred in pockets south of the QEW and north of Dundas Street.
Christine Hallas, a spokesperson for Burlington Hydro, said about 3,800 of its customers were without power for varying amounts of time from early to mid-evening.
“You have to clean up the (fallen) trees before you can get the (power line) repairs done,” she said.
There were just six customers waiting for their electricity to return as of noon; they were expected to back on the grid later today.
The high winds caused serious damage to the Burlington Airpark, a busy, privately-owned airstrip on Bell School Line, south of Britannia Road.
Airpark spokesperson Tim Crawford said there was widespread damage to a number of airplane hangars but that it could have been much worse.
“Virtually none of the planes were damaged” that were inside the hangars, he said.
A row of nine sheet metal hangars anchored to a foundation “facing west, into the teeth of the wind, lifted and flew over another row of hangars” without touching anything else, Crawford said.
Only one of eight planes that were inside the nine airborne hangars was affected, although that aircraft sustained significant damage.
“The most amazing thing is to see the planes virtually untouched,” said Crawford.
No one was injured, he said, but he noted one man was inside one of the hangars when it flew away.
“He saw the (hangar) door starting to buckle and the next thing he knew he was looking at his vehicle,” parked outside.
Burlington Airpark owner Vince Rossi is out of the country but Crawford, an administrative advisor to Rossi, said he has been made aware of the damage.
The airpark lost power around 6 p.m. but had it restored overnight.
“The airport was open and operating this morning,” Crawford said of the airpark, which accommodates small private planes and air ambulance aircraft.
There was a lot of cleaning up of debris to be done.
Crawford noted Monday’s windstorm wasn’t the worst disaster to hit the 50-plus-year-old airpark. In December 1999, a fire swept through a row of hangars causing $7 million in damage to planes and vehicles.
In other damage reported around the city on Monday, downtown resident Flora Dooley said a large limb on their mature maple tree came down around 4:30 p.m.
The Hurd Avenue home’s deck was damaged as was the cover on a hot tub. A glass table was destroyed.
A two-kilometre stretch of the North Service Road, from Heritage Road to Walker’s Line, was closed in both directions around 6 p.m. for downed hydro wires.
A tree struck a vehicle on Lakeshore Road, near Guelph Line, around 4:20 p.m. Halton police say no injuries were reported; the westbound lanes of Lakeshore Road were partially blocked in the area.
Around the same time, a report came in to police about a hydro pole that was leaning on Walker’s Line near Berton Avenue, just south of Dundas Street.
A resident contacted the Post to say a large tree branch came down around 4:30 p.m. on Brant Street across from St. John School, not long after students had been let out for the day.
- Source: http://www.insidehalton.com
The Burlington Airpark sustained significant damage from Monday's windstorm. Nine airplane hangars were lifted and tossed aside by the high winds. Here, three planes sit apparently without damage but missing their protective sheet metal hangar.
Here lies the remnants of one of the nine metal airplane hangars at the Burlington Airpark that were tossed aside during Monday's windstorm.
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